Chiaroscuro
by 4mation-is-1derful
Summary: "Chiaroscuro: the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition." Max pushes at time, pulls it, warps it, shapes it. It's not always comfortable, but it's worth it, and it keeps her world safe. Until someone pushes back.


_click_

The squirrel freezes, its ears and nose twitching rapidly, alert to the possible presence of predators. Clutching the acorn protectively, its tail whips in nervous arcs, the tiny mammal wary of the sudden intrusion. After a few seconds, the squirrel relaxes enough to drop back to the ground. Evidently unnerved, though, it snatches up its treat and dashes back to the safety of the trees.

Max plucks the photo from her camera, giving it a little shake, partly to encourage the shot to develop, but mostly just out of pure habit. While she was nowhere near getting a picture she'd be comfortable submitting to Mr Jefferson's "Everyday Heroes" contest, Max could at least add some meat to her somewhat-distressingly bare portfolio.

Even if it was mostly just a stack of unrelated shots of graffiti, wildlife, and the agonies of high school.

It's odd, Max thinks as she tucks the photo safely away into her bag. If someone happened to look into her compiled pictures from this week, they wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary. It would seem like just another week at Blackwell Academy. Nobody would realise the sheer level of insanity that had taken place.

Of course, that was the benefit of having time travel powers, Max supposes as she makes her back to the entrance of the girls' dorm. The only person who'd ever know the full story would be Max herself.

But knowledge is misery, Max finds as she closes the door behind her, timidly peeking down the hall in case of an ambush from Queen Bee and her pom-pom posse. While she might be the only one who completely knows what happened (hasn't happened?), those lost-and-found recollections are causing not a little bit of distress.

If only it was just emotional distress, Max thinks as she puffs her bangs out of her eyes. The emotional drain is bad enough as is. It's the physical realm which worries her the most.

Max hadn't noticed at first. Well, she had, but she hadn't realised what it was exactly. Ever since she'd come back, back from that _other_ present. She'd thought it was the pain of seeing Chloe begging for death, of having to condemn William to his fate, of knowing the loss that she was intentionally causing her best friend. But it was more than that.

Her power has never been easy to use. Max knows this. From that first time back in the bathroom, Max has been aware of the limits of this strange ability. It's not just a case of waving her hand and having everything rewind. No, it's… it's a _push_. When Max lifts her hand to cast her spell, she has to force her willpower through her palm, as if she's gripping the fabric of space and time, and _shoving_ , _gripping_ , _tearing_ it, forcing it to bend to her will. It wasn't easy, but it was doable. More than doable. She could do it all night, buying herself extra hours every day. She could zip back and forth through conversations, and the mild discomfort of grappling the universe into submission was a small price to pay.

Until Kate. Until the roof.

That was the first time that her power had pushed _back_. Time had wrapped itself around her wrist, gripped tight, and _twisted_. The shock had been massive. Having her willpower forced back up her arm into her head, _squeezing_ her brain until a blood vessel popped… it was terrifying.

So, naturally, Max was a little more apprehensive in running around spamming the rewind button. Prodding and poking instead of pushing, patting instead of groping, hoping that her gentler touch wouldn't offend the laws of the universe as much. And it seemed to have worked. Smaller headaches, less fatigue, no more nosebleeds.

Until she'd gone and fucked with the five years' worth of timeline.

Ever since she's gotten back, there's this constant _pressure_. Not from when she uses her power. _Constantly_. And not from the outside, either.

No, this is comes from the inside. As if every vein in her arm is burning and pulsing and straining, trying to pull away from the muscle and bone. A dull throb which Max can push to the back of her mind, but is never gone. And in moments like this, the lulls between active brain use, it's more ferocious than ever.

Wincing, Max half-walks half-stumbles to the showers, flexing her fingers to try and alleviate the pressure building up in her arm. She rolls her eyes when she sees the typical graffiti tattooing the mirrors, and then instantly regrets it when it causes a bolt of pain to lance from palm to temple.

Max is about to turn on the faucet, hoping that maybe a good old-fashioned splash of water will help clear her head, when she notices a butterfly perched on the doorknob. Not the blue butterfly. Just a regular, yellow-and-black butterfly, fluttering its wings. Fascinated by the light playing off the bright yellow, yet absorbed by the black eye-like markings, Max knows that she can't let this shot pass.

Burying the heat pulsing in her forearm beneath the willpower of her artistic sensibilities, Max lifts her camera, slowly, so as to not startle the insect. Her finger presses down on the button, and-

 _click_

Maxine blinked, shoulders hunching, a stab of pain lancing through the vein her eyelid. The film whirred out of her camera, and the crow, startled by the sudden noise, flapped away into the air, squawking indignantly. The deer corpse didn't protest at being abandoned mid-meal. If anything, the empty, glassy eyes seemed a bit relieved at the interrupted feast.

Irritated, Maxine yanked the photo out of her camera. She didn't need it to finish developing to know that the shot had been ruined. Jittery hands and a startled subject never gave a good shot, and contrary to the displays of recent film directors, shaky cam was _not_ a particularly desired photography technique.

This had been happening more and more often, Maxine thought irritably as she shoved her camera back into her satchel. Ever since that bizarre evening where she'd found herself trapped in an alternate universe, alone in the girls' dorms at Blackwell. It had been like a truly surreal experience, one which had almost convinced Maxine to stop buying weed off Prescott. The feeling of being yourself and yet not yourself, in a body which didn't seem to quite fit, in clothes which felt vaguely familiar but looked awful, in a room that was somehow hers and completely alien, hipster music blaring and surrounded by gaudy posters, and a sad, dead pot plant sitting forlornly by the window…

It. Was. Hideous.

Thank god she'd woken up to find herself back in her own body. At Price's house, for some reason, but that had been ok. Maxine didn't hate Price or anything, it was just that they'd sort of drifted apart when they were young, and they'd never really felt like they had the same connection. The occasional letter had been tossed out, sure, but Maxine just hadn't felt that spark from back in the day.

Besides, there were only so many pictures you could take of a disabled girl before it just got plain depressing. Art was supposed to be tasteful, and too many shots of Chloe the Wheelchair Wonder would take it from tragic to tacky.

Chloe had understood. Maxine had rewound plenty of times to make sure she got the right wording.

Sighing, Maxine looked regretfully at the dead deer, mourning the loss of that perfect shot. Sure, she could rewind, but there wasn't any satisfaction in recreating an image when the original moment had been so _parfait_. If she was going to stoop to that level, then she might as well just go into Photoshop.

Maxine made her way back to the junkyard proper, where Prescott was busy patting down the earth with the flat of his shovel. Rolling her eyes, Maxine popped a stick of gum into her mouth, breathing in the minty flavour to try and ward off the stench of rusted metal, spilt oil, and decomposing flesh.

"Let me guess," Maxine drawled, popping a bubble just because she knew it irritated him. "She managed to crawl out of the ground and dragged herself back to civilisation, where she currently awaits you with the entire ACPD, with your dad hanging in the background from a noose."

"Shut up, Caulfield," Prescott snapped, eyes jerking up furiously to glare at her. Maxine raised an eyebrow and popped a bubble, never breaking her cool gaze. The silence stretched between them as the seconds ticked on, punctuated only by the _pop_ of bubblegum.

Finally, Prescott's eyes dropped, just as she knew they would. He brought the shovel down harder, an immature redirection of his frustrations. Unable to vent at her, he instead slammed the dirt back into place with gusto.

"It's just," and god, his voice was breaking, and Maxine could feel another episode coming, "it was so real. It was like she was standing right there, at the foot of my bead. Staring, accusing. She, she pointed a finger right at me, and she said my name. She _knew_ , she _knew_ , she was going to tell _everyone_ -"

"At which point you woke up, realised you'd pissed the bed again, and started screaming at the ghosts in your head again," Maxine said, rolling her eyes.

Prescott swivelled around, and this time he had murder in his eyes, shovel rising as he started to swing at her, and goddamnit, but they had to do this so often, and it was starting to get _boring_.

Maxine raised her hand and grabbed the strands of time in a fist, twisting sharply, subjugating reality beneath the crushing dominance of her will. Prescott swivelled back again, his eyes dipped down, and the shovel reversed its arc to resume pounding on the ground. Satisfied, Maxine released her grip, allowing time to flow once more.

"-was going to tell _everyone_ what we did, and I just had to make sure, because I'm fucking telling you, Maxine, _she knew and she was going to tell_."

Maxine resisted the (overwhelming) temptation of a sarcastic retort. Even broken dogs would bite if kicked too much. Instead, she patiently assuaged poor Prescott's paranoid, shattered mind.

"Well, now you know for sure, Prescott." And his eyes flashed angrily again, and _really_ , but Maxine had neither the patience nor interest to deal with a wounded psycho, so she flicked her wrist to hop back a few seconds.

"Well, now you know for sure, Nathan. Rachel Amber is still as dead as a doornail, nobody's going to know what you did to her, and your dad doesn't have to deal with murder charges on top of everything else. Everything good?"

"What _we_ did!" And god, Prescott's such a drama queen, spitting and frothing at the mouth. Maxine's phone buzzed, and she knew before she even checked the screen that it's from Chase, because good ol' Vicki's thirsty as fuck for the all-knowing, ever-perfect Queen of Blackwell, Maxine Caulfield. Still, the desperate, playing-hard-to-get messages of Victoria Chase were more interesting than another Nathan Prescott rant, so Maxine pulled out her phone and scrolled through the latest series of needy texts.

Prescott didn't relent, just as Maxine knew he wouldn't.

"You were the ones who took the photos!" he yelled accusingly, as if volume would make up for insecurity. "They were your ideas in the first place, you and Jefferson! I didn't- I never- it wasn't my fucking plan! I just brought the girls and did what you told me, while you just kept clicking your fucking camera-"

"Yeah, I'm sure you were really broken up about it when I told you to tie her up and fuck her from behind." Maxine replied absently as she got distracted by a selfie of Chase in her lingerie, ostensibly just asking for Maxine's opinion on the design. Honestly, you have one quickie in the showers and then suddenly the girl's clinging to you like you gave her a wedding ring…

"It was all you! It's always you!" Prescott tried to bellow, but fear and self-loathing made his voice crack mid-shout. Maxine made a non-committal grunt. "Always just sitting there with your camera, you and Jefferson, telling me what to do, telling her what to do, telling _us_ what to do! _Nobody_ tells me what to do!"

Finally having enough, Maxine snapped her phone closed, fixing Prescott with a piercing gaze and a disappointed sigh. Prescott took a step back, and honestly Maxine didn't know which had the bigger effect on him.

"Look, Prescott, I'm at Blackwell for the art. Okay? I'm not here to step on your shoes, or hold your leash, or collar you to a lamppost. You can feel free to back out at any time. Jefferson would probably be more than willing to take your place, and there are some angles which are more interesting when there's a significant height difference. But in all honesty, you're more photogenic, so I prefer to have you as my model. But if you're going to have a hissy fit every time we have to wash up after a photo shoot, well then, there's nothing keeping you. But for god's sake, I don't want to be dragged out to the junkyard because you're freaking out over Rachel Amber, or breaking into Kate Marsh's room to prove that her brains are splattered over the pavement and not following you around in a jar or whatever. So either fucking man up, or go ahead and run back to daddy, _Junior_."

For a moment, Maxine wondered if she'd pressed a little too hard, but her irritation had been pent-up and, well, even she needed to vent now and then. It was so damn _frustrating_ to have to put up with all these Vortex Club sycophants and psychos, and honestly if it wasn't for the easy pickings for her shoots, then honestly Maxine couldn't say for sure that she wouldn't just ditch the lot of them for some of the other kids at Blackwell. At least you didn't have to worry about triggering some repressed angst mine with them.

Prescott's eyes got huge. His nostrils flared. The shovel's grip squeaked as his hands tightened into fists, nails digging into the rubber casing. All of his muscles tensed, and he looked entirely ready to attack her.

But Maxine was strong, and Prescott was weak. Her willpower had the universe bending over at her every whim. His willpower was about as a strong as a starving mutt eyeing a juicy bone. Prescott had just been broken too many times. He was barely holding the shards of his sanity together into a rough facsimile of a human, and when pressed by a superior spirit, he caved inwards, his fractured mind bending along familiar cracks.

Briefly, insanely, Maxine wondered what it would be like to capture that moment on film. The second of complete destruction. Watching through her lens as Prescott shattered into a million pieces, scattering into tiny crystals, imploding beneath a force too great for his fragile mind to bear. What it would be like to immortalise such utter devastation.

But that day would not be this day. Prescott averted his gaze, his muscles slumped limply as tension blew out of him like air out of a balloon. His grip slackened, and his shoulders heaved with a huge, silent sob. Satisfied, Maxine relaxed her fingers, no longer in threat of an immediate rewind. Turning around, she waved one hand lazily.

"Come on, Nathan. I'll drive. Hell, I might even buy you lunch at the Two Whales. I imagine Joy won't be there today, not with her daughter's funeral to plan, so you won't even have to deal with her giving you the evil eye the whole time."

There's silence for a minute as Prescott gathered the shreds of humanity back into his straining, person-shaped vessel. Then, the sound of scuffing feet as he jogged to catch up.

"Funeral? Price is dead?"

Maxine nodded as she turned the key in the ignition. Her Porsche purred into life, headlights blinking sleepily before popping wide awake. Well, technically not _her_ Porsche, but Victoria wouldn't mind that she'd borrowed it. Cunninglus could solve all kinds of problems.

"OD'd on morphine. Not a bad way to go. Quiet, sure, but painless."

In the split second between finishing her sentence and pulling the car out of reverse, a blinding headache struck Maxine, pain flashing bright white behind her eyelids. Something pulsed beneath the surface, an ache that started in her hand and shot like lightning to explode in between her eyes. Something warm and wet trickled against her upper lip. Surprised, she dabbed her nose and found her fingers come away bloodied, vision blurring momentarily as the edges of not just her vision but seemingly all reality shuddered and frayed.

Then the moment was gone, and Prescott was talking, and Maxine quickly wiped away the sudden nosebleed, lest the smell of blood triggered Prescott into trying to bite her nose off or something.

"Huh. You know, I'd have thought you'd care more. Or at least pretend to. Do the whole thing with the fake shock and the sudden tears. She was your friend or whatever."

Maxine ground the tip of her tongue between her teeth surreptitiously, quickly working the burst of pain into watery eyes. Not that she thought Prescott would buy it, but because it was good to stay in practice.

"What makes you think I'm pretending? Maybe I'm just so torn up inside that I can't express any more emotion."

Prescott actually laughed at that. As the moonlight catches his profile, illuminating half of his light skin and bright hair with mystical silver and thrusting the other into dark oblivion, Maxine found herself admiring the sight, wondering if she could take a picture, fantasising what else she could do with a face that was made for the light, and a soul that was born in shadow.

The whoosh of a blowtorch, crackle of burning fat and skin, and the smoky ash of charred flesh rose to mind.

"Maxine Caulfield, I don't think you're capable of feeling emotion. I think that you're a cold, frigid bitch who only wants one thing in life. And that's to get the perfect shot. To take all the emotion in the world which you can't take part of, and putting it into a fucking Polaroid so that you can poke and prod and wonder at what this thing is. And you know what I think?" Prescott turned in his seat to look directly at Maxine, who matched his gaze, not caring if neither was looking at the road.

"I think that when the day comes that you do get that perfect shot? When you've collected everything in the world and put it into your weird-as-shit photo album? I think that will be the day you kill yourself."

The absurdity of Prescott's statements is so immense that it actually took Maxine a few minutes to comprehend what he was saying, all while he sat there with this manic glee in his eyes, as if he couldn't wait for the sight of Maxine Kate-Marshing herself off Arcadia Bay's pier. When understanding finally dawned, it made Maxine laugh.

She burst out into a single, huge guffaw, and there was an odd sensation, as if there should be more to laughter than that. Her lips tingled, as if someone else had been using them to smile and laugh recently, unfamiliar to Maxine. But her amusement was such that she quickly blew past the emotion to fix Prescott with the most devious, most mocking smirk that she was capable of.

"Oh, Nathan Prescott. Oh, you poor sad soul. Is that what you've been hoping for? That you just need to wait long enough for me to kill myself, so that you can have the luxury of outliving me? Is that what gets you out of bed, forces you through the day? The idea that you can watch my slit my own throat, so that you can dance in my blood and fuck my cold corpse? You complete, fucking moron."

Prescott's grin had frozen on his face at the laughter, but with each word it's slowly drooping into a snarl. Teeth bared, eyes slits; he's like a murderous animal. But he won't attack Maxine, because right then, Maxine held all the cards, held all the power. And if there was one thing that he'd had beaten into his skull day in and day out by Sean Prescott, it was that nobody could touch absolute power.

Maxine's grin was as predatory, her incisors glinting in the moonlight, eyes sparkling like hellish sapphires. She wished she could pause time just to take a selfie, but that would ruin the mood she'd built up, the momentum with which to completely dominate Nathan Prescott.

"It's like I said, Prescott. I'm here at Blackwell for the art. But I'm not here for the classes or the courses. Oh, I like the work well enough, and getting to work with Mark Jefferson is a great bonus, but really there's nothing here that particularly interests me academically. See, the real reason I'm here is the _people_.

"There's something about the people who go to Blackwell. All of you, so superior, so gifted… but so insecure. You have the money, or the talent, or the brain, or the beauty, and you think that you can wrap yourself up in it like a security blanket, keeping you safe from the world.

"For me, that's where the true art is. That's where the essence of artistry can really shine. That moment when I can reach down, and hold you, and hug you, and love you, until you open up that security blanket just enough to let me inside, to sit in there with you, all warm and safe. And that's when I can tear you open, and tear you down, and see you for who you _really_ are. That's where the art is. That's where the camera is. Because nothing can beat the sheer amount of _fun_ from watching you all crumble like cookies in milk, and knowing that I can hold on to that image forever.

"So you see, Prescott, it's not about the emotion. It's about the _fun_ in art. It's about _not being bored_. Because high school is boring. Most modern art is boring. All people are boring. Hell, even Mark Jefferson is boring once you know why he does what he does. But art is fun. Photography is fun. And knowing that you can keep the moment forever, that single shot where a whole person's world comes crashing down? Well, now _that's_ the kind of art that's worth living for."

Entirely giving up on the idea of road safety (whatever, she could rewind if something happened), Maxine pulled her camera and took a picture of Prescott, right there, framed by shadow and moonlight, face caught between uncapped fury and complete and utter despair, the moment of breaking as Maxine took from him the only thing that kept him safe: the idea that this partnership of theirs was a power struggle, two equals vying for control.

He had never realised that Maxine had won before the game had even started.

"Smile," Maxine said as she tried to hold her camera steady with one hand. "I want this to be a _hella_ good picture."

 _click_

"Hey, Max, are you okay?"

"Wha-?" Max jerks backwards, stumbling. She slips and lands heavily on her butt. Her camera slips from her grip and clatters across the tiles before sliding to a stop against the wall. The butterfly, startled, flutters away as Dana walks into the showers, towel slung over her arm, look of concern on her face.

"You're looking a bit pale. You alright?" Dana presses a hand to Max's forehead, pushing her bangs out of the way. She gasps. "Max, your nose is bleeding, like, insanely."

"What?" Max's fingers swipe across her upper lip and come away stained red. Her vision fractures for half a second, the tiles shifting to the dashboard of a fancy Porsche, each eye seeing a different life. Then, reality asserts itself in the form of Dana hurriedly mashing toilet paper against Max's face, trying to stem the bleeding.

"God, Max, there's blood all over your face. What the hell happened?"

"I, uh, slipped." Max says lamely. She instantly wants to bash her head against the wall. Even by her standards, that's an awful excuse, and judging by Dana's face, she's not buying it either.

"You slipped and landed on your butt so hard that your nose exploded?"

Max is very much considering hitting the rewind, if it weren't for the fact that the agony in her arm and head makes the notion of rewinding about as appealing as drinking vomit. In fact, doing _anything_ sort of makes Max want to hurl.

 _Everything_ feels wrong. Her head feels too small for her brain, her skin feels too tight, but her organs feel too big, her blood feels too cold, her bones feel too small. When she tries to look at Dana, she sees two faces looking back. One is a worried-looking Dana with bedhead tied back into a messy ponytail, the other is Dana pressed against a wall, eyes unfocused, stinking of weed and alcohol, tongues pushing against each other as Maxine wonders if its rude to take a selfie during a make-out.

The thought of Maxine actually does make Max puke, and she crawls rapidly to the toilet to empty her lunch. Dana lets out a strangled yelp of surprise before rushing over to rub Max's back and hold her hair out of the way.

Max's head is throbbing, and she can feel a jumbled set of confused, pained thoughts mixing with her own, as if someone else had been dumped into her mind and now there were a multitude of thoughts and emotions and unadulterated panic flying around in her brain. Throughout all this, though, images and names and feelings are flashing, and then there's a face, and then two faces, but it's the same face.

Oh god.

Maxine has been dragged back into this world for a second time, and now there are two Caulfields trying to occupy the same brain space.

Maxine's thoughts are quickly getting clearer, much faster than Max's, as she pokes and prods through Max's memories. She lingers on the image of Max staring at the picture of thirteen-year-old her and Chloe, and Max can feel the other girl's dawning comprehension and wonder. So she never figured that trick out, but now she knows, and now she's demanding to know more, pushing deeper into Max's memories, trying to force Max out of her own head.

Because that's who Maxine is. She's pushy, and curious, and bored, and she just wants to escape the banality of life through any means possible, and she doesn't care who gets hurt so long as she can be entertained.

And right now, she's in Max's head, and now that she's here, she wants into Max's life.

There's no way Max is letting that psychopath run wild in this universe too.

The very action of lifting her hand is enough to make Max's intestines bubble and burn, but that's nothing compared to the frustrated pulse of agony that comes from Maxine. Strangely, there's no anger, and Max wonders if that's because Maxine is literally incapable of anything beyond boredom and relief from boredom, and she wonders if Nathan had been right about her after all.

Still, Maxine's frustration is more than enough to make an already difficult task near impossible, as she tries to force her will upon Max's body, pulling with all her might as she desperately tries to claw the power back from Max's fingertips, refusing to let go of her new toy so quickly.

And the pressure feels like it's actually going to make Max's head explode, having two minds in one body, and the previous feeling of the universe pushing back has quadrupled in response, the entirety of quantum space crushing down at this aberration which has somehow doubled in power.

But this is Max's body, and she hasn't gone through this week of utter hell just to have this monster pop into her life and turn the world into a living nightmare to ease her boredom. She thinks of Chloe, and Kate, and Warren, and Dana, and Stella, and Alyssa, and Daniel, and Trevor, and Joyce, and hell, even Victoria and Nathan, and she knows that she cannot, under any circumstances let Maxine take over.

Max's fingers splay outwards, her palm shaking with the amount of power trying to force its way out. Maxine, realising what's about to happen, tries to take over Max's other arm and from the way she wrenches it around, Max is entirely convinced that Maxine is willing to rip her own arm out if its socket if it means she can stay in Max's head a bit longer.

Max's wrist flicks just as her other hand comes crashing down on top of it, smashing it against the tiled floor.

 _click_

The squirrel, startled by the sudden screaming, will abandon its acorn and go scampering up into the tree branches, frightened out of its little squirrely mind.

Max will collapse to the ground, wrist throbbing, head pounding, but blissfully alone. Her camera will fall from her grip to land on the ground, thankfully unbroken, but the lens will get caked in dirt and grass that will take hours to scrub off.

For once, though, Max will be too preoccupied even for camera. Lying on the grass, panting, Max will just lie there, brain throbbing, but there will be only one set of thoughts to contend with.

She's not sure what happened (her memories and Maxine's memories and maybe even some entirely fake memories are all rattling about in her head), and there are so many new ideas and feelings transplanted into her head that Max can't quite place exactly which are her feelings and which aren't, but the lack of an overwhelming, domineering presence in her brain confirms what Max (and really, she's never wanted anything this badly, like, ever) is completely alone.

Her memories are completely fucked, though. Phantom senses and ghostly experiences flit around in her subconscious, just below the level of scrutiny, five years' of unlived memories lurking beneath the surface. Max takes a deep, shuddering breath, exhales. She decides to take another one, just for good measure.

Maybe one more won't hurt.

Ouch, never mind, that last one hurt. A lot. But at least it confirms that Max is alive. Hopefully.

Max opens her eyes, blinking against the noon light shining through the leaves. She counts to ten, waiting for Maxine's bullying, monstrous presence to come surging back, demanding her presence be recognised and submitted to.

Nothing.

Just a hint of shattered remembrances. A lingering touch of a clawed, fanged mind. Cursing, threatening. Promising.

Promising what can be. Could be. Will be.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Max groaned in response, throwing a hand across her sore eyes. She then yelped, her sore wrist protesting, but not as loudly as before. Hopefully the phantom pain would wear off.

Peeking through a gap in her fingers, Max could make out a short-haired girl standing above her, hands on her hips. Chloe?

"I'm nowhere near okay," Max mumbled. "In fact, I'm so far away from K that there aren't enough letters in the alphabet to describe how not ok I am."

"Uh, sure." The voice was uncertain, but the intonations were starting to clear as the ringing in Max's ears passes, and that voice was definitely not Chloe. Kate? "If you say so. Think you can stand?"

With a groan, Max forced her eyes wider, blinking back the light assaulting her poor senses. The shadowy girl in front of her started to bloom into vision in blots, like a too-big image that is loading in a few pixels at a time. When the picture clears, though, Max found herself staring at none other than a surprisingly concerned-looking Victoria Chase.

"Victoria?" Max managed, not at all able to keep the surprise from her voice.

"Uh, yeah?" Victoria responded, but not in her usual, sarcasm-dripping tones. If anything, she sounded a little unsure, on edge… afraid? "Are you sure you don't need to see a doctor or something? This is the second time this week you've been acting really weird. It's really not like you at all."

"Ugh. Let's just say that this week gets worse with every passing day." Max said with a groan as she pulled herself upwards. Her knees complained the whole way, and her elbows were close behind in terms of internal volume. Stretching and feeling every joint in her body protest in response, Max grimaced. She shot Victoria a questioning look, wondering how long this charitable act would last. "I don't suppose you could give me the time?"

"Uh, right." Victoria quickly snapped her phone open. "It's two in the afternoon. How long were you lying there, Maxine? You missed the last hour of class."

"I wasn't really here that long, I just got distracted by a squirrel and some crazy stuff-" the words registered. They registered _hard_.

Max slowly turned, still mid-stretch, hoping against hope that she'd misheard.

"What did you call me?"

Victoria threw her hands up, a noise somewhere between giggling and exasperation bursting forward in a sigh. "Oh, yeah, 'Max'. Really, Maxine, you're really going to have to make up your mind about this whole nicknaming thing. I mean, I get it, I flip-flop between Vicky and Tori, but still, some consistency would be nice."

Max couldn't hear a word of Victoria's rant over the noise of blood rushing in her ears. Meanwhile, somewhere beneath the surface of her consciousness, she thinks she can hear a single guffaw.


End file.
